Vladimir Putin pens Syria column for NYT

The New York Times on Wednesday published a column by Vladimir Putin in which the Russian president urged the United States not to launch an attack on Syria.

“We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement,” Putin wrote in encouraging President Barack Obama to pursue the possibility of a diplomatic settlement to the crisis caused by the use of chemical weapons.

Text Size

-

+

reset

Referring back before the decades-long Cold War to the time when the United States and Soviet Union were allies in World War II and worked to create the United Nations, Putin argued that a strike would render the U.N. impotent (“No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations”) and lead to additional violence in the Middle East and around the world.

“Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy,” Putin wrote of that nation’s civil war, “but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough [Al] Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. … Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria?”

Putin also rebuked the notion, referred to in Tuesday’s speech by Obama, that the United States is somehow exceptional and therefore able to function by a different set of rules than other nations.

“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation,” Putin wrote.

Putin’s efforts at a diplomatic solution have gained steam in recent days as Obama has faced persistent and seemingly unyielding opposition to the notion of a U.S. or international strike on the Middle Eastern nation. The idea is that Syria would give up its chemical weapons, subject to verification.

In response, a senior administration official said, “President Putin has invested his credibility in transferring Assad’s chemical weapons to international control, and ultimately destroying them. The world will note whether Russia can follow through on that commitment.”